thank you imogen poots

by m.e. gamlem

I can’t name what I have survived. There is no clear explanation of the suffer talking to all the corpses in my chest. Yes, my  face and body have been carved up since I was a baby, sewn back together, parts and pieces removed and burned, stitches and staples, teeth pulled out, host organs removed and replaced, electrodes attached, then detached, then attached again, counting the beats, delivering the shocks. But I’ve been black out and unaware for most of those, left to wake up with itching stitches, slices in my lips, cuts in knees and hips. Could endurance be the impossible unspoken?

There is the craving, too, for punishment. All the inked scars in you skin, down my arms to my fingers, covering their chest and breasts, running the course of your legs, upside one of my ass cheeks, her inner thighs where I should like to be touched. Acceptance of the need to be hit, licked, bit, suckled upon, settled deep inside as a pincushion, a distraction, a misguided sanctuary. Flesh plucked like fruit. A slap to the face while being spat on. Worship to spit back with a smile.

The touch of men is met with a wild eyed grimace, the reminder of dead ancestors buried under ancient grounds of the gated communities, skeletons somewhere, fully intact, finger bones clutching their favorite sword. The collective longing for a winter day, where we never have to see another man again. Best not get too close, wear disguises. Don’t be outside, nor in field, nor near the streams. Not in the market or on the street. Where we no longer have to be so that we might be.

There is some thing lurking, that has no word, swims in the veins, gnaws at heart where the atria and ventricles meet, slops around in the muck of the guts, feeds unknown fears like insects into the ear canal, bangs wrenches against the skull. It untwists the twine of the ligaments, sets loose the chaos from underneath. But where did this come from, what does it want? What more does it have to say and how long can the ugly echoes hollow the sound before giving over to black decay?

I want to know your name, smell your fingers placed just above my lips, take blood from your hips. One slow drop, then another longer drain. The positive side of all this plague of violence, this simulacrum teleplay,  is that dead men don’t say anything new.

Photo of m.e. gamlem

BIO: m.e. gamlem is a queer writer from New Mexico. They are a MFA candidate in the Low Residency MFA program at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe. Their work most recently appears or is forthcoming in The Potomac Review, Mouth Full of Salt, ANARKISS, Dogwater, and Screen Door Review.